Understanding Human Agency

Erasmus Mayr

Advances a brand-new theory of human agency

Challenges a central problem in philosophy of action

The first book by an award-winning scholar

Understanding Human Agency

Erasmus Mayr

Description

Our self-understanding as human agents includes a commitment to three crucial claims about human agency: that agents must be active, that actions are part of the natural order of the universe, and that intentional actions can be explained by the agent's reasons for acting. While all of these claims are indispensable elements of our view of ourselves as human agents, they are in continuous conflict and tension with one another, especially once one adopts the currently predominant view of what the natural order must be like. One of the central tasks of philosophy of action consists in showing how, despite appearances, these conflicts can be resolved and our self-understanding as agents be vindicated. The mainstream of contemporary philosophy of action holds that this
task can only be fulfilled by an event-causal reductive view of human agency, paradigmatically embodied in the so-called 'standard model' developed by Donald Davidson. Erasmus Mayr, in contrast, develops a new agent-causal solution to these conflicts and shows why this solution is superior both to event-causalist accounts and to Von Wright's intentionalism about agency. He offers a comprehensive theory of substance-causation on the basis of a realist conception of powers, which allows one to see how the widespread rejection of agent-causation rests on an unfounded 'Humean' view of nature and of causal processes. At the same time, Mayr addresses the question of the nature of reasons for acting and complements its substance-causal account of activity with a non-causal account of acting for
reasons in terms of following a standard of success.

Understanding Human Agency

Erasmus Mayr

Table of Contents

Introduction1. The Problem of Human Agency2. The Agenda for Finding a Solution3. 'Alien' Desires and Frankfurt's Problem of Identification4. Identification, Desires, and Practical reasoning5. Deviant Causal Chains6. How Agent-Causation Works I: The Problem, and a Brief Theory of Powers7. How Agent-Causation Works II: The irreducibility of powers8. How Agent-Causation Works III: From Causal Powers to Agent-Causation9. Are Agent-Causal Powers reducible to Microproperties?10. Intentional Agency and Acting for Reasons11. Understanding Human AgencyReferencesIndex

Understanding Human Agency

Erasmus Mayr

Author Information

Erasmus Mayr is Lecturer in Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. He studied philosophy and law in Munich and Oxford, and received the Wolfgang-Stegmuller Award of the German Society for Analytical Philosophy (GAP) in 2009 for his PhD thesis.